


there's no stopping this and now he's powerless

by thatsparrow



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: (And Preston), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Lapin Lives, Campaign: A Crown of Candy, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, Spoilers - Episode 6: Chaos in the Cathedral
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:47:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24203119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsparrow/pseuds/thatsparrow
Summary: Lapin wakes up in shadow, beaten and broken badly enough that the air is heavy with the sugar-rich smell of his own blood.In sweetness—, he thinks.But where is my strength now?[spoilers for episode 6: chaos in the cathedral]
Relationships: Lapin Cadbury & Peppermint Preston
Comments: 13
Kudos: 135





	there's no stopping this and now he's powerless

**Author's Note:**

> title from "the switch and the spur" by the raconteurs

Lapin wakes up in shadow, beaten and broken badly enough that the air is heavy with the sugar-rich smell of his own blood.

 _In sweetness—_ , he thinks. _But where is my strength now?_

His senses return to him slowly, but when they do, the picture they paint is an un-pretty one: a six-by-eight foot cell of hewn stone, matching sets of cinched iron manacles running between his wrists and ankles to bolts in the wall, the feeling of sticky, half-dried chocolate across an aching stretch of his abdomen. His staff is missing, as are his Primogen robes, but there is a small huddle of pink-and-red peppermint near his feet, something with twitching ears and a curlicue tail and sharp button-black eyes.

"So we're alive, then," Lapin says, gingerly lifting himself into a sitting position while the pig—Priscilla? Praline? No, _Preston_ —shuffles forward and nudges at his hand with a soft, damp nose. "Perhaps the Bulb is capable of kindness after all."

"I wouldn't be so sure of that, apostate." Walking up on the other side of the bars is the young Commander Grissini, flanked by two fellow Ceresian guards. He looks battle-weary and bloodstained—though, notably, not with his own; blackberry jam, if Lapin had to guess, judging by the smell of sugared fruit. (Heaven knows he'd never respected them, but Lapin will certainly credit the Tartguard for that particular moment of loyalty.)

"Just a joke, Commander." Lapin's mouth narrows in a tight smile. "I know well that the Bulb has no capacity for kindness or mercy. Has your Pontifex told you that, I wonder? Do you know you serve a hollow god?"

"Silence, _heretic_ ," one of the guards hisses. "Keep your false words behind your teeth unless you'd like me to cut them from your tongue."

Lapin lets his smile widen but remains quiet; there's surely pain enough in store for him without inviting more of it himself.

"Easy," Grissini says to the guard. "The Pontifex warned us of the lies he would tell. A rabid dog barks loudest when it feels the chain tightening around its neck."

Lapin exhales—not quite a laugh, but not entirely humorless either. _A rabid dog_. Well, he's been called worse.

"Something funny, apostate?" A line creases Grissini's brow. "I can't imagine what you might find amusing about your situation." 

Notting particularly, but Lapin is hardly about to give them the satisfaction of seeing the knotted weight of his concern instead. He'll two-step so long as he has the illusion of stable footing, however rotted and fragile the foundations might really be. 

"Tell me," he says after a moment, "Sir Keradin, in the cathedral—he killed me, did he not?"

"He did."

"And yet given that I am here, alive, I must have been revivified, yes?"

"Obviously," Grissini says with a note of impatience.

 _Interesting_ , Lapin thinks. _And likely inauspicious._ He glances between Grissini and the two guards at his side, then lets his eyes alight on the man at Grissini's left, the one who'd threatened to cut out his tongue. He considers the man, makes a thoughtful noise in the back of his throat. "Would you like to know what I saw in the afterlife?" Lapin says to him. "Would you like to know the true form of your Bulb? How many can say they've been blessed enough to behold it themselves?"

The guard looks between him and Grissini, the sharp, irate lines of his expression bent a little by uncertainty. Then to Lapin, voice notably less assured than before, "I would never be so foolish as to trust your falsehoods."

"Understandable," Lapin muses. "But how can you be sure that I'd lie? Even for a man with such conviction in his faith, aren't you the slightest bit curious of what I have to say?" Lapin raises an eyebrow.

The guard hesitates for a moment. Lapin gestures for him to move closer. Slowly, his face warring between anger and doubt, he crouches down to where Lapin sits.

"Ennio—" Grissini says, warning. Lapin leans towards the bars, lowers his voice for Ennio's ears alone.

"It was luminescent and shining," Lapin whispers. "The most beautiful thing for miles, brighter than any that had come before or would follow. To walk closer demands that you shield your eyes, lest your vision be burned away as punishment for your hubris. But I did approach, and I felt its light and its heat and its power, and then I opened my eyes—just for a moment—and do you know what I saw?"

Ennio tilts his head closer, eyes shut, his forehead pressed against the iron as he listens.

"— _Nothing_." Ennio recoils as if scalded, mouth twisted in a snarl. Lapin raises his voice as he continues, grinning wide. "All that beauty and all that brightness and _nothing_ beneath it!" He feels fingers at his throat as Ennio's hand shoots through the bars, fisting around his collar and yanking him forward. Sharp, bruising pain blooms across his face as he slams into the metal, splitting his lip and the skin above his eye, snapping something in his nose, reopening a healed-over wound on his temple. Lapin can taste chocolate on his teeth and laughs, loud and reckless. "Congratulations, for your faith is akin to a man praying for salvation at the foot of a fucking _boulder_ —"

"Enough!" Grissini shouts as Ennio starts to move again, shouldering him back from the bars, one hand closing around Ennio's wrist until he gives up his hold on Lapin's collar. Lapin falls back against the wall, still smiling as something begins to swell above his eye, blood pooling along his upper lip and against his gums. Grissini shoves Ennio back against the far wall, forearm up under his chin, and says, " _Leave_ —" he jerks his head at the other guard, "—both of you, until _you_ can learn some composure."

Grissini holds himself in front of Ennio until he relents, then gives a curt nod as he straightens his uniform, adjusts the grip on his spear, and turns to walk back down the hall with his compatriot. Before he goes, he spits on the ground in front of Lapin's cell, muttering something that sounds like _filthy fucking heretic_.

"Have you always been such a fool?" Grissini asks once they've gone. "Or does being in Comida bring it out in you?"

"I can see very few bright spots from my current vantage, Commander," Lapin says, wiping some of the blood from his nose, his temple, his eyebrow. His smile fades. "Forgive me for having enjoying a moment of levity when the opportunity appeared."

"Your situation can always be made worse." Grissini leans on his spear; it at least seems clean of dried jam or crumbs of shortbread crust. Then again, how much difference does it make that he didn't do any of the killing himself? "I say that not as a threat, but as a reminder. You are only alive because it suits the will of the Pontifex. So long as she believes you are useful, she will take whatever steps necessary to wring out your remaining value."

"If that bloated broccoli _bitch_ thinks I'm helping with anything, then I look forward to enlightening her."

"Bulb above, _wake up_!" Grissini snaps. "Are you truly so oblivious to the nature of your situation that you need me to spell it out for you? There is no future in which you live to see the outside of this prison. While you are here, the Pontifex will make use of the wide scope of her imagination and the tools at Sir Keradin's disposal until you surrender any and all information you have about House Rocks, your fellow Candians and their political intentions, and the source of your witchcraft." Grissini pauses; Lapin is as weary as he's ever been, his eye nearly swollen closed from the bruising blow of the bars, but he could almost mistake the expression on Grissini's face for something akin to shame. "Undoubtedly the process will be both slow and painful. Once it's done, should you have proved to be compliant and your intelligence reliable, she may be merciful enough to allow you a quick death." He blinks, eyes shifting away from Lapin's stare before meeting it again. "Far likelier, though, that she devises some new punishment to fill your final days, simply for the inconvenience you've caused her thus far."

"You don't seem particularly pleased at that prospect, Commander," Lapin ventures, watching the slight shifts in Grissini's face. "Won't you also be excited to watch the ' _false prophet_ ' burn?"

Grissini holds himself carefully still. "I have tremendous respect for the Concorde, for the duties of my station, and for the oaths I have taken to Ceresia and the Emperor," he says after a moment. "That does not mean I take any satisfaction in the outcome awaiting you. From what I witnessed on the Sucrosi Road and in the tournament, as well as in the cathedral, you and your fellow Candians seem a group worth admiring." He exhales, slow. "I am—truly sorry that this is the future we find ourselves in." 

"Sorry enough to help me attempt an escape?" Grissini maintains his steady, statue-faced look, and Lapin smiles a little ruefully. "No, I didn't think so. I thank you for your insights, Commander, and for your kind words—however hollow they might be." Grissini winces a little; a cheap barb, but at this particular point, Lapin won't deny himself such pettiness. "Was there anything else? If not, I would ask you to let me enjoy whatever remaining peace and quiet I am permitted." 

Grissini works at his jaw, brow still creased. "Save your breath on spellcasting; the cell has been enchanted by the Pontifex herself to prevent any witchcraft. I believe your first—interrogation is scheduled for tomorrow morning, so you should still have some hours to rest." He turns to go, then pauses. "For what it's worth, they haven't been found yet—your king and the princesses, nor Sir Theobald or the Jawbreaker boy. If they've managed to escape Comida, there may still be some hope for them." 

And then he's gone.

In the dim light of the cell, Lapin lets out a deep sigh, allowing his face to bear all the weight of the bone-deep exhaustion he's felt since waking; he has no way of seeing his reflection, but he wouldn't be surprised to see new wrinkles dug in around his eyes and bridging his forehead. Heavens, he's so _tired_. Next to him, Preston makes a soft _whuffing_ noise and clambers half into his lap, circling a few times before settling in a tight peppermint curl, his snout pressed into the crook of Lapin's left elbow.

"Alright, but just this once," Lapin says, petting absently at the soft, peach-fuzz stretch of skin between Preston's ears. "And only because this will stay with us." He scratches under Preston's chin, then notices a clump of something sticky dried into the short bristles of Preston's fur, minty-smelling blood congealed around scarred-over skin, ragged wounds that match the barbed edges of Keradin's mace.

"What a bastard." His hands are gentle around the pale pink stretches of new skin. "Who goes after a _pig_." He murmurs the incantation for a healing spell—both for poor Preston and himself—but true to Grissini's word, nothing happens. Unfortunate; in addition to Preston's wounds, he can feel at least two cracked ribs in his own chest.

"I should give the Pontifex more credit for her counter-charms," Lapin says after a moment. "That, or you've cut your losses and found a new attendant." He smiles wryly. "Likely one who can serve your interests more effectively than from a cell."

He waits, but there's no answer. Were he a hopeful man, he might attribute the silence to the Pontifex's wards, shielding any divine influence from entering the cell as effectively as they've dampened his own spellcasting ability. Far likelier though that he's been abandoned to his fate.

"I suppose it's just you and I now, Preston." He glances down and takes some small comfort in the continued rise-and-fall of Preston's chest. "For the moment, at least. Admittedly, this isn't how I'd envisioned the end of my particular story, but the dice fall where they may. Heaven knows there are worse companions I might have found myself with."

Preston lets out another contented _whuff_ and resettles himself, eyes gently closed.

"I think you have the right idea there," Lapin says, resting his head on the wall behind him, doing his best to ignore the slight crag of stone jutting into his lower back. "If Commander Grissini is to be trusted—and, in this case, I believe he is—then such moments of peace will be few and far between in the days to come." 

_Whuff, whuff_.

"Yes, I'm glad to hear they're alright, too, though I'd place little faith in our paths crossing again. My apologies—I know I'm not the companion that young Liam was." 

_Whuff. Whuff, whuff_.

"Very well, I shall endeavor to sleep. Perhaps we'll wake in the morning to find a kinder world."

 _Whuff_.

"No, I don't think so either."

As Lapin closes his eyes and counts the measure of his breathing, he works very hard to rein his wayward thoughts back from dark visions of tomorrow, of windowless rooms and tables with built-in restraints and long trays of metal-mouthed implements. Focuses instead on remembering his study in Castle Candy, flickering firelight against the bound spines of his books, sugar-spun windows opening up to a view of the grounds below, the purple-tipped peaks of the Great Stone Candy Mountains to the north.

 _Breathe_.

A forest of ice cream-frosted evergreens instead of Sir Keradin's blade digging for secrets under his skin. Spring afternoons by the banks of the Cola instead of the sickly yellow light of the Pontifex's magic. Powdered motes of pastel dust in the castle library instead of hands tightening around his throat or firebrands pressed against his feet. Home instead of a cell. Safety instead of this aching pit in his stomach.

 _Breathe, Lapin_. _It is all you can do for the moment_.

When he finally drifts off, the sleep he finds is a fitful one, punctuated by uneasy, sharp-edged dreams. Slowly, though, his mind drifts towards calmer waters, the soothing rhythm of a lazy current, true rest for his worn-down mind. At one point, Preston shifts in his lap, still half-asleep, nosing the air around them curiously. Almost as if he'd caught the faint smell of sugar plums.

**Author's Note:**

> as far as I'm concerned, you can't prove that lapin wasn't revived and carted off to a cell (to be eventually reunited with the candians.) also there's no reason for preston to have been saved, too, except that he's wonderful and I want him to be alive.


End file.
